Woman wants her two dogs back; Fargo-based rescue won't return them

NORTH DAKOTA -- A canine controversy erupted Wednesday after a woman whose two Labradors ended up in the hands of a dog rescue asked for them back, and the rescue refused.

Stephanie Olson, who lives about 50 miles from here, posted a rallying cry on Facebook Tuesday asking Fargo-based 4 Luv of Dog Rescue to return her pair of black Labrador retrievers, Mack and Murphy.

By Wednesday, the post was shared over 1,500 times and prompted questions about why the rescue would not return the dogs.

But the story is more complicated than a tale of a woman who wants her dogs back, said SueAnn Horner, a volunteer at 4 Luv of Dog Rescue. The rescue did not know the dogs were missing when it received them from a Moorhead pound, and one of the dogs has already been adopted out, she said.

The rescue also sometimes refuses to return a dog if it is in the dog’s best interest, she said. When an owner contacts the rescue to claim a dog, the rescue will verify the owner and make sure the dog is being properly taken care of before deciding whether to return it. If there is a “red flag,” the rescue may decide to keep the dog and adopt it out to a good home. She said the rescue’s board, made up of about 10 people, makes such decisions.

Attempts to interview a board member on Wednesday were unsuccessful.

“They’re not doing this to make a statement or to be mean,” Horner said. “They weren’t comfortable with giving the dogs back.”

4 Luv of Dog Rescue receives dogs two ways: from the city or from owners surrendering their pets, the organization said Wednesday on Facebook. Dogs that sit in a pound for several days become city property and are at risk of being euthanized unless a rescue steps in to take ownership of the animal.

The two Labradors in question came into 4 Luv of Dog’s possession after a stay in a Moorhead pound, Horner said.

“Legally, you know, it’s the city’s dog,” she said. “They can go ahead and transfer it to a rescue, and then it’s the rescue’s dog.”

But that is unlikely to soothe the dogs’ owner and her family, who have “cried and prayed for their return.”

“I have begged 4 Luv of dog staff to tell me where they are, asked to see them again,” Olson wrote on Facebook. “I receive no response to those questions.”

According to the post, Olson saw the dogs on the 4 Luv of Dog Rescue website on Sunday, a month after they ran away. She had placed them on a lost dogs database, contacted local shelters and law enforcement, and searched for the dogs, she wrote on Facebook.

Horner said the rescue did not know that the dogs, who have been renamed Indy and Grayson, were missing when they were picked up from the pound.

Murphy/Grayson has already been adopted, she said. The other one is still with the rescue in a “pending state,” awaiting the conclusion of this controversy.

“They’re not going to adopt him out in the middle of this,” Horner said.

Olson declined to be interviewed.

(INFORUM - Feb 11, 2015)